Starting July 6, The Dallas Morning News will publish announcements of same-sex unions. The announcements will run alongside paid marriage and engagement announcements on Sundays.

"The publication of same-sex union announcements is a logical step for The Dallas Morning News to take," says James Moroney III, the paper's publisher and CEO. "We are now in line with practices of most major metropolitan newspapers across the country.

"We convened a meeting of representatives from the Cathedral of Hope as well as four other men and women from various businesses in order to represent a good cross-section of Dallas' gay community," he says.

The paper's parent company, Belo Corp., began offering benefits to same-sex partners of Belo employees in January, and the new policy on union announcements is a natural progression, he says.

Heather Jace of Melissa and her partner, Jandy Jace, are one of the couples running announcements in today's paper.

The couple had a small commitment ceremony in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, on June 9, followed by a reception when they returned home. She says she isn't worried about any sort of backlash from the announcement. "I would like to think the community is mature enough to accept it and embrace it," she says.

Vanessa Benavides and Amy Davis, two Dallas attorneys who had a black-tie commitment ceremony in Dallas on June 14, are also buying an announcement. The couple also got married in Canada on June 23, and Ms. Davis took the name Benavides.

"I think it's important to let the community know that we go together, that we have made this commitment," says Vanessa Benavides, 28.

"I think that's the importance of marriages  to have witnesses to know that we've made this commitment together."

The paper's criteria for publishing an announcement are that the ceremony takes place in public, and that somebody officiates.

A two-inch announcement is free, while photos or longer announcements are charged according to size.

The Dallas Morning News joins 205 other papers that publish same-sex union announcements, including 10 in Texas, according to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination, or GLAAD.

"I'm so happy and so glad to hear this," says Monica Taher, people of color media director for GLAAD.

She worked last year on the group's project to get additional papers to publish same-sex union announcements.

The New York Times' decision last August to begin publishing same-sex union announcements was a watershed, she says.

Since then, many more papers have begun publishing such announcements, she says.

At some papers, executives had argued that printing same-sex announcements was tantamount to taking a political stand, but GLAAD representatives responded that not running them was also taking a political stand, she says.

Pamela Strother, executive director of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, also praised The Morning News' new policy.

"It's fantastic that The Dallas Morning News has moved forward on this," she says.

"It shows that a newspaper in a region that might be seen as conservative is willing to step out on this."

NLGJA leaders have also been meeting with newspaper executives, including The New York Times' publisher, says Robert Dodge, last year's president and a writer in The Dallas Morning News' Washington bureau.

"Our work was journalist to journalist, colleague to colleague, behind the scenes," he says.

A call for banning all condoms. A call for banning all birth control. A call for banning birth control surgeries. Jail for doctors who proscribe birth control. A lack of understanding that heterosexuals engage in oral/anal sodomy. And just above, a pro-muslim take over post.

Excuse me whilst I just step out of the way and let the lunatics take over the asylum.

The ABOMINATION Jehovaha God speaks of has now come home to roost! Freedom of expression and the realization of where this society has regressed to leaves no doubt of what the Queer Lifestyle is all about. America lost its innocence years ago. When you cannot trust the parrish priest why are you so surprised?

Spinless, wandering empty shells of a cast off society search for a way to be accepted and there is a never-ending parade of politically correct brain dead air heads waiting to connect with. Their new Lifestyle of packing fudge fits them well!

This pitiful sorry lot of wasted humanity deserves no special provisions or allowances normal society enjoys. Their existence ruptures the gene pool, contaminates and wrecks the blood supply we all depend on, cannot reproduce the species, harbors and spreads virrulent exotic diseases, exactly as Jehovaha God in the Bible warned us about! This sick organism serves only to confuse the young and innocent by forcing their abhorent Lifestyle on society that is already over the edge morally and spiritually!

The Amoral characteristics common to their ilk stinks like the Abyss they crawled out of and will return once again to like a dog returns to its vomit! HELL! is waiting in reserve and is fanned to about 100 degrees hotter to welcome them!

Even as miserable as you are,I won't leave you without hope! You may not believe in Hell and thats fine; but it is a real physical place and you are headed that way if you don't change your ways partner! The un-pardonable sin you have heard of only figures in when you finally,totally die a sinner not accepting JESUS as your only way of salvation! I hate no person individually only the SIN of the Lifestyle. So if you choose to gamble eternity in a firey burning HELL; go ahead punk, do ya feel lucky?

I never said is was my paper, you are quick to accuse everyone of intolerance, but you seam to be intolerant of everyone that does not follow your thinking. And your style of liberty [In other words - liberty is NOT being able to tell people what to do. It's the ability to DO WHAT YOU WANT.] By that kind of thinking then all laws are against your liberties and that is total chaos, so governments by the people are to have the say by the majory of each state. We have long operated this way, in Michigan fireworks are against the law, so if I want them I have to go Indiana and buy them and become a crimal by bringing them across the state line and using them. If 37 states already have laws against same sex marriages or unions then why should the people of those states set back and do or say nothing when papers to things like this that are promoting something that is against the law. No one would stand for this with drug dealer partnerships or other crimes.

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